Antique print showing the Harmony Society Building (Dutch: Societeit de Harmonie), an elite social club in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. It was the oldest clubhouse in Asia when it was demolished. Activities at the club included cards and billiards. Indigenous people were excluded from the club. The construction of the group's building included the former bricks of the wall of Old Batavia. It was demolished for road widening and parking area in 1985.

Entitled: JAVA. Het Societeits - Gebouw de Harmonie / L’ Hotel de la Societre L’Harmonie.

This original lithograph originates from: 'Gezigten uit Neerlands Indie, naar de natuur geteekend en beschreven.', by C.W.M. van de Velde, published in Amsterdam, Frans Buffa en Zonen (1844-1845). A very beautiful and luxuriously illustrated work on Indonesia.

Artists and Engravers: Charles William Meredith van de Velde (1818-1898) was a Dutch Navy officer, painter and mercenary. Van de Velde drew the drawings whilst he was a midshipman on the ZM Triton and later when he was working in Batavia for the Commission for the Improvement of Maps and Charts of Indonesia. He had the ambition to reproduce the beauty of Indonesian landscapes, in which he was inspired by the artists and other members of the French scientific expedition under Dumont D'Urville. Frans Buffa en Zonen was at that time the most famous lithographic workshop in Amsterdam. All 50 plates were carefully lithographed by the renowned Belgian lithographer Paulus Lauters (1806-1876), who also had worked for Goubau's lithographic printing office in Brussels. In 1836, when the Royal School for Engraving was founded by Antoine Dewasme at Brussels, Lauters was appointed professor of drawing.

A beautiful and detailed crayon style lithograph on a vellin type paper. Some age-related toning. Blank verso. Please study the image carefully.

(The image shown of this print is created from separate scans joined together, and might be joined imperfectly at some parts. We are happy to send you photographs if the complete sheet)